Tourists could send out postcards with vacation photos uploaded onto them, couples could send wedding invites with a digital version attached, and schools and businesses could hand out multiple pages of documents uploaded to a single sheet of paper.

It used to be that the old "found disc" baiting routine was enough to nab random people into running stuff on autoplay. Imagine being able to directly target folks. Most people would have a guard up against an anonymous disc or thumb drive but you slap a name on it and suddenly it's "come on in".

Cheap paper thumbdrives could be quite fun from a malicious perspective.

Mrbogey:1- Create virus.2- Put on postcard.3- Mail out as commercial info to select people

The per unit cost would be far too high for that to be in any way viable. Spamming via e-mail has essentially no cost. No envelopes, no postage. You can automate distribution via a script that crawls the web for e-mail addresses and/or one that generate hundreds of thousands of random e-mail addresses to blast. You'd have to have a monumental success rate to make spam-by-u.s.-mail in any way profitable.

kronicfeld:The per unit cost would be far too high for that to be in any way viable. Spamming via e-mail has essentially no cost. No envelopes, no postage. You can automate distribution via a script that crawls the web for e-mail addresses and/or one that generate hundreds of thousands of random e-mail addresses to blast. You'd have to have a monumental success rate to make spam-by-u.s.-mail in any way profitable

Yea, price is the main issue but most people seem to be savvy enough not to run code sent to them via email. But a targeted attack could have a bit of payoff. Especially since they expect this to be cheap enough to be used in friendly postage correspondence.

Mrbogey:kronicfeld: The per unit cost would be far too high for that to be in any way viable. Spamming via e-mail has essentially no cost. No envelopes, no postage. You can automate distribution via a script that crawls the web for e-mail addresses and/or one that generate hundreds of thousands of random e-mail addresses to blast. You'd have to have a monumental success rate to make spam-by-u.s.-mail in any way profitable

Yea, price is the main issue but most people seem to be savvy enough not to run code sent to them via email. But a targeted attack could have a bit of payoff. Especially since they expect this to be cheap enough to be used in friendly postage correspondence.

You both are right, perhaps...

As a virus, it is unreasonable to mass distribute, certainly. However, if one wishes to pose as a representative for a company and pass out business cards with "demos" imbedded and those recipients happen to be the ones who may be privy to sensitive data, well, maybe those "demos" phone home with that information.

WhoGAS:However, if one wishes to pose as a representative for a company and pass out business cards with "demos" imbedded and those recipients happen to be the ones who may be privy to sensitive data, well, maybe those "demos" phone home with that information.

There are several recorded cases of hackers dropping trojan-laden thumb drives in the parking lots of bank offices and similar organizations.

My car has a cassette deck, so I still listen to mixtapes from the mid-80s. They still work fine. I still like the music. No harm, no foul.

I haven't heard anything that sounds like a really good use for these paper USB drives yet. In my experience, all 'thumb drives' are disposable, and you can get 8 GB for under $5 if you buy a dozen at once. These paper ones would be . . . smaller . . . and have a thousand times less storage space. Even if they cost 50 cents each, I don't personally see any time I'd want to buy one.

Doesn't mean something won't come up, but I'm not seeing any obvious excitement at this point. Maybe in the next generation.

These re like a modern version of the "Evatone Sound Sheet" from my youth: a flexible record that often came stapled inside a magazine or glued to the back of a cereal box. it was how I listened to The Archies" "Sugar, Sugar".

One way I might use the paper USB tech would be to load a concert ticket with a unique bonus track of a band's music, as a collectible.

We all know however that this tech will mainly find use as a medium for porn.

Mrbogey:kronicfeld: The per unit cost would be far too high for that to be in any way viable. Spamming via e-mail has essentially no cost. No envelopes, no postage. You can automate distribution via a script that crawls the web for e-mail addresses and/or one that generate hundreds of thousands of random e-mail addresses to blast. You'd have to have a monumental success rate to make spam-by-u.s.-mail in any way profitable

Yea, price is the main issue but most people seem to be savvy enough not to run code sent to them via email. But a targeted attack could have a bit of payoff. Especially since they expect this to be cheap enough to be used in friendly postage correspondence.

They seem to have overlooked a glaring problem with the design. They want these things to be sent through the mail. Have they never looked at wait their mail looks like by the time it makes it to them? These things are going to be decimated by automatic sorting machines, fold/creased/wrinkled after having been stuff in bags and boxes, and at least part of the time they are going to get wet somewhere along the way. In other words they have designed a product that essentially can't be reliably used for the primary purpose it was designed for.

Hacker_X:They seem to have overlooked a glaring problem with the design. They want these things to be sent through the mail. Have they never looked at wait their mail looks like by the time it makes it to them? These things are going to be decimated by automatic sorting machines, fold/creased/wrinkled after having been stuff in bags and boxes, and at least part of the time they are going to get wet somewhere along the way. In other words they have designed a product that essentially can't be reliably used for the primary purpose it was designed for.

Special ED209:Hacker_X: They seem to have overlooked a glaring problem with the design. They want these things to be sent through the mail. Have they never looked at wait their mail looks like by the time it makes it to them? These things are going to be decimated by automatic sorting machines, fold/creased/wrinkled after having been stuff in bags and boxes, and at least part of the time they are going to get wet somewhere along the way. In other words they have designed a product that essentially can't be reliably used for the primary purpose it was designed for.

Kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage of.Drastically reduce the strength or effectiveness of (something): "plant viruses that can decimate yields".

How about a more modern definition from a more widely used dictionary.

I mean, before we can agree on a definition of something, we must decide on which text we will use for the base of the discussion. Can't try to talk about apples when you're actually talking about oranges.